Market Update Monday: Inside NYC’s $250M ‘Smartest Park in the World’

Hudson Yards is being called the smartest park in the world. The Public Square at Hudson Yards, which will cost $250 million to build and is said to open in 2018, will be filled with 28,000 shrubs and 200 trees – all atop a working rail yard.

To ensure foliage will not be harmed by radiating locomotives, the park’s soil will be jet-engine air-conditioned and irrigated with recycled rainwater collected in a 60,000-gallon tank. Jay Cross, president of Related Hudson Yards, commented, “It’s not often that you build a park on top of a rail yard. We had to think about how to ensure that the public space would thrive”. The park, designed by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, will include free WIFI. Cross remarks, “It’s less of a park and more of a plaza, a place for people to gather.”